In article <1176412432.715383.47140 from w1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
Bill <connelly.bill from gmail.com> wrote:
>This may be a stupid question, but I've only ever figured out how to
>do these things by myself, is there a better way to cure slygard on
>your pipettes than holding it a foot above the bunsen burner? I don't
>want to leave it for the 48 hours that it takes for the sylgard to
>cure at room temp, (according to the dow corning website), I've bought
>into the dogma that old patch pipettes don't work that well.
When I was patch-clamping in the mid 80s, I found that Sylgaard
made NO difference to noise levels. Moreover, the presence of a
hydrophobic coating created a more curved meniscus which made
manipulating the pipette in relation to the cell harder. So I
omitted the coating step. I was studying single channel currents
in inside-out patches from cardiac and skeletal muscle membrane,
using an EPC-7 amplifier.
YMMV, of course - but have you tried NOT Sylgarding?
Francis